Former Liverpool goalkeeper Chris Kirkland has opened up about his addiction to prescription painkillers, admitting it was "months or even weeks from killing me" before he went cold turkey last year.
Kirkland, who made one appearance for England in 2006 and featured for Liverpool in their 2005 Champions League winning campaign, began taking prescription painkillers in 2012 to help with a long-standing back injury. After making the move from Wigan Athletic to Sheffield Wednesday, Kirkland suffered a recurrence of his back injury in pre-season two days before the Championship season began.
There was a clause in his contract that meant Wednesday could cancel it if he missed three games with back problems, so Kirkland began taking tramadol. "Two days before I was due to make my Sheffield Wednesday debut I got an injury but I just thought 'I've got to play'," he told the i.
"People were already saying 'Why have they signed him? He's never fit', which wasn't the case. I got hold of some tablets and thought 'I'll use them when I travel' and it got hold of me quick. Any addiction does and it's a very slippery slope."
The recommended dosage of tramadol is 400mg and Kirkland admits that when his addiction was at its worst, he was taking as much as 2,500mg a day along with solpadine and co-codamol. He was able to get clean in 2016, but relapsed three years later in 2019 and once again during lockdown the following year.
This time, Kirkland went cold turkey and has now been clean for more than a year, but as part of his routine to ensure he does not relapse again his wife Leeona gives him random drug tests. "I had done it once before in 2019 and I was fine back then, I maybe had a sniffly nose for one or two days," he said.
"So I thought I'd be fine, I'd done it before. But this was horrendous. I wouldn't wish those [first] seven, eight days on anyone. I had hallucinations, constant sweats, cold, vomiting, aching and I cramped all over my body. I didn't sleep for five or six days, basically.
"Leeona slept in the room next door to me because I was tossing and turning and she came in to check I was still breathing properly. It is extremely dangerous and it's not recommended but I didn't want to taper off, I just didn't want to put another tablet in my mouth. The seconds feel like hours but I made it through.
"Once you get past the six- or seven-day mark you have to start functioning again – ice-cold showers help, baths, going out for walks helped. Then it's a case of having things set up so you don't go back into them. Ninety-five per cent of the time I'm really good."
